Joe Sobran, as evidenced by his recent columns, seems close to being convinced, if not already convinced, by Hans Herman Hoppe's book, Democracy: The God that Failed. As you might have guessed from the title, Hoppe thinks democracy was a bad idea, but he goes further than that; he thinks government, in any form, was a bad idea. He's an anarcho-capitalist. In an anarcho-capitalist society, instead of using police and an official court system to punish criminals, individuals would hire defense agencies, in much the same way we hire insurance agencies now. Then, if you're robbed, your agency would try to track down the guilty party, and, when they catch him, bring him to trial, probably before a judge agreed to by both your agency and his.

I don't know if Sobran realizes this, but anarcho-capitalism sits poorly with his pro-life views. The unborn, and for that matter born children, will be unable to hire an agency to protect them from their own parents or, in the case of some already born children, step-parents. It's not an accident that Murray Rothbard, the founder of anarcho-capitalism, was pro-choice. In chapter 14 of The Ethics of Liberty, he defends the legality of abortion, as indeed he had to, because if abortion is a crime and an abomination that ought to be punished - and it is - that constitutes a fatal weakness in anarcho-capitalism.

But it extends beyond abortion to child abuse and neglect. Continuing, he wrote that parents, specifically mothers, since pater incertus est, have property rights in their children because they made them. But then he pulls back, and inconsistently advocates limits on parental authority, both by ending it at adulthood and by excluding physical abuse from the things parents can do (but he does not exclude neglect). If, however, you apply the labor theory of property to human beings and not merely the non-human world, neither of these restrictions makes sense. If mothers own children the same way they would own a statue they carved or acorns they gathered, there's no logical point at which the ownership ends, not at 18, not at 21, and not when the kid moves out (Rothbard's own suggestion).

In the case of abuse, his position faces an even greater problem. Not only is his insistence that parents lack the right to "aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc." inconsistent with property rights over the children (why can't I mutilate my own property?), in an anarchist society, there's no one to enforce a prohibition against torturing or murdering one's own children.

Locke himself, the originator of the labor theory of property, did not consider children the property of their parents, and for very good reason; it would've been half way to Filmerism. What he said instead was, "The power, then, that parents have over their children, arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their children, during the imperfect state of childhood." (Second Treatise, para. 58)

The only kinds of crimes that could be punished in a pure anarcho-capitalist scheme are ones directly harming paying customers of a defense agency. This certainly has the advantage of doing away with non-crimes like drug possession and prostitution, but, by the nature of how the system operates, it must also leave unpunished real crimes against those other than paying customers. Children, especially unborn ones, are out of luck, and they aren't the only ones. Protection of those outside the charmed circle of paying customers would be based only on charity, and it's easy to imagine pro-life agencies emerging to punish abortionists, but there would just as certainly be pro-choice agencies, and the two kinds of agencies would necessarily exist in a permanent state of war. Once you've gone beyond the model of agencies simply selling protection, there's nothing to prevent agencies from "altruistically" punishing the smoking of marijuana or, for that matter, the drinking of alcohol. An anarchist society can only be peaceful if all force-users other than purely profit-driven defense agencies are excluded and punished (which would mirror the exclusion of other force-users anarchists criticize the state for), and if they are excluded, the unborn will be left with no protection at all, and legal abortion will be more secured by the legal system than any Supreme Court ruling could ever make it, because it would be secured by the structure of the system, and not merely by a changeable rule.

The only kinds of crimes that could be punished in a pure anarcho-capitalist scheme are ones directly harming paying customers of a defense agency.

Nope.

The market protects people in unexpected ways. For example, people in the Eastern Bloc drove these cruddy little cars like Trabants and Ladas because they depended (forcibly) on the government to protect them from carmakers. In the West, we drive far better quality products, precisely because we have a market. I don't know whether Ford or Firestone was at fault for the Explorer problem but you can be damn well sure that they fixed it. The market doesn't tolerate screwups. I don't have to know anything about tires to benefit from the marketplace.

WRT babies and other defenseless people, my first point would be: are they protected now? Surely the position of the Libertarian Party - return the issue to the states - is superior to that of the supposedly anti-abortion Republican Party - which is to betray their supporters. Returning the issue to the states is the first step towards establishing a free market in abortion policy.

More importantly, the market protects the defenceless too. Rothbard and Hoppe are wrong to continually talk about defence companies. They are obviously an integral part of the Natural Order but the first line of defence to wrongdoing is not hired hands. Rather it is ostracism.

If I renege on a debt to my credit card company, the company wont normally sue me in court. Instead they will put a black mark against my name and I will find that honest merchants will cease to give me credit or to deal with me in any way with other than cash. Eventually, I will give in, right the wrong I caused, and I will be re-instated in polite society.

No government. No punishment (why do you insist on that anyway?). Just quiet resolution of the wrong inflicted and restitution thereof.

In The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard disgustingly refers to a foetus as an intruder in its mother's body and claims that she has the right to expel the intruder. Well, in some absolute sense, he is right. It is her body and she reigns supreme over it. OTOH, killing someone else because he inconveniences you is evil. Rothbard forgot the second half of the equation. The answer is not to jail her (and historically women were never jailed for murder  do you really want them to be?) but to denounce her actions as evil and humiliate her in polite company.

It would also be a good idea to denounce Rothbard for his repulsive lack of concern for the unborn.

One last point. Do you really want to trust government to protect your rights? Didn't work well for the Trabant drivers. Nor, for that matter, for the children stolen by the CPS.

Thanks AJ you have captured precisely what is needed to restore this Nation back on the path to again being the beacon of the world. Without it, to borrow a comtempory phrase, we just suck. Just like the Europeans we would be heading for oblivion. Now let's discuss something important - tax cuts anyone?

It's not necessary to "strengthen the state" to provide protection to the unborn. The ability of the state to protect the rights of citizens is already there. What we're faced with is putting unborn children under this protection.

The purpose of government is to defend the equal rights of all persons, with special care to the defenseless. The writer of this article is absolutely right that abolishing government would only frustrate this and leave the weak unprotected--which would, in turn, endanger us all by creating a society of the survival of the fittest.

What we've done in our society is corrupt government--turning it from a protecting agent to an oppressive one. Certainly we don't want to see an expansion of this power; the key to protecting the unborn is to reverse the government's power back to a focus on the equal protection of rights.

The market protects people in unexpected ways. For example, people in the Eastern Bloc drove these cruddy little cars like Trabants and Ladas because they depended (forcibly) on the government to protect them from carmakers.

Wait a minute there! There's no comparison between communism and being protected from murder. You're misusing the term "protection" here.

WRT babies and other defenseless people, my first point would be: are they protected now? Surely the position of the Libertarian Party - return the issue to the states - is superior to that of the supposedly anti-abortion Republican Party - which is to betray their supporters. Returning the issue to the states is the first step towards establishing a free market in abortion policy.

Turning the issue over to the states still leaves you with a government, not anarchy. I agree about the Republican party on abortion, and certainly Roe vs. Wade needs to be overturned, which would return it to the states, but an amandment might ultimately be a good idea.

A free market in policy isn't a good idea, and anarcho-capitalism couldn't bring it about without permanent warfare. You'd have the problem of people paying agencies to punish whatever they wanted.

More importantly, the market protects the defenceless too. Rothbard and Hoppe are wrong to continually talk about defence companies. They are obviously an integral part of the Natural Order but the first line of defence to wrongdoing is not hired hands. Rather it is ostracism. If I renege on a debt to my credit card company, the company wont normally sue me in court. Instead they will put a black mark against my name and I will find that honest merchants will cease to give me credit or to deal with me in any way with other than cash. Eventually, I will give in, right the wrong I caused, and I will be re-instated in polite society. No government. No punishment (why do you insist on that anyway?). Just quiet resolution of the wrong inflicted and restitution thereof.

In The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard disgustingly refers to a foetus as an intruder in its mother's body and claims that she has the right to expel the intruder. Well, in some absolute sense, he is right. It is her body and she reigns supreme over it. OTOH, killing someone else because he inconveniences you is evil. Rothbard forgot the second half of the equation. The answer is not to jail her (and historically women were never jailed for murder  do you really want them to be?) but to denounce her actions as evil and humiliate her in polite company.

I don't think Rothbard is right about that at all. If the baby intruded into her mother, at what point did the intrusion happen? At or before conception? No, she didn't exist yet. After conception? No, she's already there. The baby had no choice in the matter. The issue isn't the mother's body, it's the baby's body (and you do admit here that the baby is a person). As I said before, when it's killing someone, shunning doesn't cut it.

One last point. Do you really want to trust government to protect your rights? Didn't work well for the Trabant drivers. Nor, for that matter, for the children stolen by the CPS.

That depends on the government. The communist governments weren't trying to defend rights in the first place. They had other, evil goals. The CPS is abusive and needs to be restrained if not abolished, but being against abortion doesn't mean supporting everything alledgedly done "for the children". In fact, most people who do things "for the children" want abortion to be legal.

I did call drug possession and prostitution non-crimes, of course, so my libertarian credentials are still good. I've always been pro-life.

Isn't that selective morality? Abortion is immoral because the result is a violent death of an innocent and defenseless human being. Prostitution is also immoral because it reduces a person to an object, dehumanizing them at a base level. And drugs speak for themselves.

While it is true that laws have never completely stopped any action in society, this is not an acceptable excuse to legalize the action. Conversely, if making a thing legal were the answer to crime we could simply make everything legal and all crime would be brought under control.

Legalizing drugs, prostitution, or any other immoral action will not make society better, but make it worse. The legalization of such immoral acts only initially make law enforcement easier because fewer people are arrested, tried and jailed. But, eventually immorality breeds immorality without improving society.

If you want less government, then you should fight to retain what remains of our foundational culture.

I've already established that you are wrong to say that the market only protects people who have hired defense companies.

Now. Let's address the question of women who murder their unborn babies (and I concede nothing about what it is. Unlike Rothbard, I recognize that murder is murder). You tell me. What penalty do you advocate for their actions? Death?

"To violate this right of individual sovereignty opens many fearsome Pandoras boxes. For one example, if abortion is homicide then innocent women who have suffered miscarriages can be hunted down by the state and hustled off to gynecologists and investigated as possible crime scenes...A state that can define its jurisdiction so as to include the insides of our very bodies will leave absolutely no room left for any individual humanity at all. Such a state will not be above dictating the genetic engineering of people to make them more fetus friendly in the interest of protecting "our" little "proto-citizens." Believe me, even Catholics do not want to go there..."

Isn't that selective morality? Abortion is immoral because the result is a violent death of an innocent and defenseless human being. Prostitution is also immoral because it reduces a person to an object, dehumanizing them at a base level. And drugs speak for themselves.

Do they? You can't take their immorality as a given. I certainly don't give it. I don't know about prostitution reducing a person to an object, either. What, exactly, would such a reduction consist of? I've always thought of commerce as a distinctly human activity. No, prostitution is immoral because it involves fornication.

You're right, of course, that abortion is immoral because it kills someone. It's also something else. It's a crime. There's an actual victim, the baby.

While it is true that laws have never completely stopped any action in society, this is not an acceptable excuse to legalize the action. Conversely, if making a thing legal were the answer to crime we could simply make everything legal and all crime would be brought under control.

That's not the reason to make those things legal. The reason is, they aren't crimes. Any punishment of them is itself a crime, a crime you have to fund.

Legalizing drugs, prostitution, or any other immoral action will not make society better, but make it worse.

The immoral action I'm concerned with is violating the rights of someone else. That most certainly will make society worse.

If you want less government, then you should fight to retain what remains of our foundational culture.

I can see fighting for our culture, but not, you know, fighting for our culture.

In an anarcho-capitalist society, instead of using police and an official court system to punish criminals, individuals would hire defense agencies, in much the same way we hire insurance agencies now. Then, if you're robbed, your agency would try to track down the guilty party, and, when they catch him, bring him to trial, probably before a judge agreed to by both your agency and his.

If i am robbed, how the heck do I pay the agency ? What if the crook already hired them to not track them down ? These anarchists must have IQ level just above room temperature in an Igloo.

Offer an answer. Who pays the agency if you have been robbed of your money and how do you stop the bad guys from buying out the agency first. Who is to stop this agency from running a protection scheme like the mafia.

I cannot believe that anarchists can't see the idiocy in thinking anarchy is a viable "system".

Interesting material. From Libertarians for Life. (Yes - there are more pro-life libertarians than people might other wise believe. And I am such a libertarian myself; though I take my own stance for spiritual as well as rational reasons, I believe it ought to be none other than the individual states which should be restricting or outlawing abortion, and that the federal government had no proper business in the issue in the first place.) At least one rock and roll star whose brains haven't gone, if you'll pardon the expression, entirely to bed...

"My hope is to introduce as many who will listen, regardless of where they stand, to Libertarians for Life. For their arguments are persuasive, reasoning from science and philosophy. Anyone with an objective mind will find them hard to ignore." -Gary Cherone

For some time now, Eddie Vedder, lead singer of Pearl Jam has spoken out in favor of abortion choice. In June of 1999, the rock world heard a different take on the issue when Gary Cherone (at the time, lead singer of the band Van Halen, formerly of Extreme) penned an Open Letter to Vedder.

That pro-life letter caused a stir, and in November of 1999, Cherone discussed the matter on Fox TV's "O'Reilly Factor." Vedder has yet to respond, but the issue remains. Here's a second Open Letter.

"I feel like I know every angle of this issue," said Eddie Vedder. "I know the adoption angle; I know what it's like to be fifteen and be in a situation and have to make a decision. Terminating pregnancy is not an easy thing."Eddie Vedder, Rolling Stone 11/12/98 #799

What About the 98.6 Degree Angle?Another Letter to Eddie Vedder by Gary Cherone

The vast majority of people who support abortion take that position with the firm conviction that life does not begin at conception That being said...

If one personally felt "terminating pregnancy is not an easy thing" but was the right of the individual to make that "decision"

Is the life within the mother's womb a human person?

If the answer is no, it is not a human person Why would one feel it "is not an easy thing" to do?

If the answer is yes, it is a human person Why would one advocate "terminating" it?

If the answer is I don't know, if it is, or isn't a human person How many more "decision(s)" would one make in an uncertain "situation"?

If the unborn is not a human person No justification for abortion is necessary However... If the unborn is a human person No justification for abortion is adequate.

Nearly all arguments for abortion are based on the faulty premise that the unborn are not fully human.

Therein lies the only clear refutation of a womans rights. A womans rights  seems a mere tautology, a redundant catch phrase. Are not rights self evident? Intrinsic assumptions of the inalienable? So, when is a woman not a woman, a right not a right?

When she doesnt exist.

When does a woman become a woman?

Is it when her first ballot has been cast? Or when she graduates from her class?

Is it when she makes a wish on her sweet sixteenth? Would I be amiss if it were her first kiss?

Is it when shes diagnosed by the boy next door? Or as ambiguous as the cutting of the cord?

Is it the time it takes to travel the distance through the canal? Or when shes kicking and becomes viable?

Is it when her sex is discovered by a sonogram? Or after eight weeks when the changes in her body will be mainly in dimension?

Is it when her brain waves are detected after 40 days? Or is it around three weeks when her primitive heart beats?

Can there be only one true line of demarcation? One finite measurable point in time that differentiates life from non-life? Womanhood from non-womanhood? Rights from no right?

Is it the moment of conception  that point when all of the above is set in motion? That precise moment when "a separate human individual, with her own genetic code, needing only food, water, and oxygen, comes into existence"?

Indeed, It is at that point, "like the infant, the child, the adolescent, that the conceptus is a being who is becoming, not a becoming striving toward being.

She is not a potential life, she is a life with great potential". She is not the mother, she is an other  a somebody other than the mother.

A woman, however beautiful, however complex when fully grown, begins life as a single cell, a zygote  that stage in human development through which we all pass. She fulfills "the four criteria necessary to all life  metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction. Her genetic makeup is established at conception, determining to a great extent her own individual, physical characteristics": her eyes, her hair, her skin color, bone structure, her gender.

So let us not be confused, "she did not come from a zygote  she once was a zygote. She did not come from an embryo, she once was an embryo. She did not come from a fetus, she once was a fetus". She did not come from a little girl  she once was a little girl.

When is a woman not a woman? The answer is absolute, non-negotiable. To argue against would be to ignore the innate, the fact of the matter. The answer can never be a matter of opinion or choice. This is not a metaphysical contention. This is biology 101. The answer is scientifically self-evident  as inherent as the inalienable.

Therefore, the ability to pursue happiness is contingent upon liberty  her liberty, and her freedom is solely dependent upon the mother of all human rights...

LFL's literature and speakers are available to explain and defend why we oppose abortion. Our reasoning is expressly philosophical and scientific  rather than either religious or pragmatic. A form for ordering hard copies of our literature is available on the Web, or send a self-addressed stamped envelope to:

The only kinds of crimes that could be punished in a pure anarcho-capitalist scheme are ones directly harming paying customers of a defense agency. This certainly has the advantage of doing away with non-crimes like drug possession and prostitution, but, by the nature of how the system operates, it must also leave unpunished real crimes against those other than paying customers. Children, especially unborn ones, are out of luck, and they aren't the only ones. Protection of those outside the charmed circle of paying customers would be based only on charity, and it's easy to imagine pro-life agencies emerging to punish abortionists, but there would just as certainly be pro-choice agencies, and the two kinds of agencies would necessarily exist in a permanent state of war.

It doesn't follow. An elementary rights analysis would show that it is rightful to come to defense of the rights of others; but it is not rightful to commit aggression on behalf of others. Thus a charity hiring a protection agent to punish abortionists would do so by rights of protecting the unborn, while NARAL hiring another agent to protect the mother's whims would be out of bounds. Your agrument would work in an environment without laws, but it doesn't work in the environment you present according to Hoppe, where the use of force is moderated by judges.

The question I have for you is, you want us to buy into a system that is predicated on people living up to their agreements more times than not. This is a website for and by conservatives, yet you feel free to peddle your stuff here anyway.

If you can't abide by the simple guidelines as to what this site is about without us hiring some agency to enforce it on you (with your agreement as to a mediator? lol), then why would you anticipate anyone with a brain would agree that anarchro-capitalism is a good idea?

I've already established that you are wrong to say that the market only protects people who have hired defense companies.

No, you haven't. The dire threat that a murderer will be snubbed at a church pot-luck isn't my idea of protection, and there's no point in pretending credit card companies, or whoever, will avoid business with people who had abortions; even if a very few do, it's hardly enough to be any any real form of "protection". And in any event, the non-paying debter is known to the creditor. This is not necessarily the case with a violent crime such as abortion; the guilty party might remain unknown. The two situations are different.

Now. Let's address the question of women who murder their unborn babies (and I concede nothing about what it is. Unlike Rothbard, I recognize that murder is murder). You tell me. What penalty do you advocate for their actions? Death?

Probably for abortionists. I don't know about the mothers, but there has to be a penalty.

And how do you answer Bob Lallier's objections here?

Inside the mother's body or not, the fact remains that the issue is the baby's body. Aggression doesn't suddenly become a right because of where it happens to be. If it does, why the body, in particular? Why not property in general? If I own land, it's mine just as much as my body is.

Government jurisdiction isn't determined by location (speaking here of government in general, not any particular government), but by the nature of the acts involved, which is why his later objections are mistaken. If banning the initiation of force somehow leads to required genetic engineering, why not genetic engineering to make people more "non-fetus friendly"? If you've already granted jurisdiction over your relations with others, why not?

Do they? You can't take their immorality as a given. I certainly don't give it. I don't know about prostitution reducing a person to an object, either. What, exactly, would such a reduction consist of? I've always thought of commerce as a distinctly human activity. No, prostitution is immoral because it involves fornication.

Yes I can, because I don't live in subjective utopia. Concrete moral truths exist. Prostitution reduces a human being to an object because that is what happens when you act sexually base. It strips a person of dignity, and denegrates the sacredness of sex, marriage, family, and human life.

You're right, of course, that abortion is immoral because it kills someone. It's also something else. It's a crime. There's an actual victim, the baby.

There are victims of drug usage and prostitution also. It has a negative effect on society--the society which we have a moral obligation to pass on as healthy as possible for American children. If the "values of morality and legality" are not reinforced among the public and in the media and social institutions, the agreements, declarations, and most sophisticated juridical instruments will be useless. Without a clear conscience of what is right and wrong, our societies will be incapable of being immune to the plague of crime.

I can see fighting for our culture, but not, you know, fighting for our culture.

I don't recall asking you to wage physical war. I'm talking about the arena of ideas.

Bob Lallier apparently never cracked a history book covering the period before Roe vs. Wade. In virtually the entire history of this country, abortion was illegal. Our history has already proven illegal abortion does not open such a Pandora's box.

Lallier's essential argument boils down to reserving the protection of the state only to those whom it is convenient to protect, allegedly out of fear law enforcement might go crazy. The obvious answer is to reign in the scope of law enforcement back to its constitutional limits. Just like any crime, the burden of proof is on the accuser, and the accused has rights that must be respected.

Who is to stop this agency from running a protection scheme like the mafia.

I suppose an anarchist could answer, the same people who stop the government from running a protection scheme like the mafia, there'd be a lot to that, but the government can be restrained by the public, at least in a republic, while a protection agency, if it starts acting like the mafia, will put itself outside the market (which is the check they think will act against misbehavior), i.e., will coerce people to pay, without necessarily providing a service. So what you'd have is a small state, and a very despotical one. Unless the agencies get together and invade small states like that, there'd be a lot of reinstatement, and not in a nice way.

Ok, I just started working and have no money to pay such an agency. I get my first paycheck and get robbed at gunpoint. In fact a service provides a list of uninsured folks for a fee for the bad guys and I just can't get off that list because every pay day I get robbed.

Our history has already proven illegal abortion does not open such a Pandora's box.

Wrong. The murderers were never prosecuted for their crimes. Instead their accomplices were. Abortion became common when a significant percentage of the population came to believe that it was "a women's right."

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